FREE THEATRE CHRISTCHURCH
  • ABOUT
    • Manifestos and Writings
    • A brief history...
    • Who We Are
    • The University Connection
    • Shirley Horrocks documentary
    • Training and Devising
    • Home, Space and Design
  • HOME
  • WHATS ON
    • The Passionate Puritan
  • EDUCATION
    • Kids Holiday Programmes
    • Schools Workshops
    • Adult workshops
  • PRODUCTIONS 1979 - present
    • The Cat Eleonore
    • The Deadbeat Opera
    • Babylon Berlin
    • Beggars Banquet
    • Woyzeck
    • The Axe
    • Endgame
    • Digitising Performance
    • Erewhon: Over the Range
    • A Summer Night's Dream
    • How Dare You
    • A Winter's Tale
    • Ars Acustica
    • Alice
    • The Black Rider
    • Frankenstein
    • The Mauricio Kagel Project
    • Footprints/Tapuwae
    • Kafka's Amerika
    • Ubu Nights >
      • Past Ubu Nights >
        • Ma Ubu Night
        • Ubu Through the Looking Glass
        • Ubu in Wonderland Ubu Night
        • Frankenstein Ubu Night
        • Casablanca Ubu Night
        • Faust Ubu Night
        • Not Hamlet Ubu Night
        • Punk Ubu Night
        • The Art of the Deal Ubu Night
        • Crossroads Ubu Night
        • Ubu Shows Us the Way to Brecht's Whiskey Bar
        • The Devil and the Blues Ubu Night
        • Bowie Ubu Night
        • Warhol Ubu Night
        • Berlin Kabarette
        • Beat Ubu Night
        • Twin Peaks Ubu Night
        • David Lynch Ubu Night
        • Kafka Ubu Night
        • Tango Ubu Night
        • Ubu Ubu Night
        • Lovecraft Ubu Night
    • Canterbury Tales
    • The Soldier's Tale
    • Bluebeard's Castle >
      • Bluebeard's Castle credits
    • I Sing the Body Electric
    • Big Heads Protest
    • Hereafter
    • Passion, Pulse and Power
    • The Earthquake in Chile
    • Don Giovanni Invites you to Dinner
    • Doctor Faustus
    • The Marvellous Corricks >
      • Corricks - Credits
    • Distraction Camp
    • Remake
    • Ella and Susn
    • There and Back Again
    • Faust Chroma
    • Enigma Emmy Goering/Nico Sphinx of Ice
    • Change Proposal
    • Faust Feast
    • Diana Down Under
    • Philoctetes >
      • Production Credits - Piloctetes
    • Fantasia
    • Christmas Shopping
    • Grimm's Sleeping Beauty
    • Achternbusch in the Antipodes
    • Caucasian Chalk Circle
    • Samson Airline
    • Antigone
    • Kabarett Kabul
    • Footprints/Tapuwae
    • The Well Intentioned Wife
    • The Last Days of Mankind
    • Bakkhai / Diotek
    • Krapp's Last Tape
    • Murderer Hope of Women / The Philosopher's Stone
    • Comrade Savage
    • Love on a Bicycle
    • Crusoe: A Lapsarian Mass in Twelve Movements
    • Medea
    • Songs to the Judges
    • Resolution Island
    • Oedipus Rex/Oedipus at Colonus
    • The Empire Builders
    • States of Shock
    • Robinson Crusoe or: I That Was Born To Be My Own Destroyer
    • Power
    • MedeaMaterial
    • Salome
    • Electra
    • The Girl Who Sings Waterfalls
    • Hamletmachine
    • Oresteia
    • A Respectable Wedding
    • Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
    • Cloudkiwiland
    • Double Act / Postponeless >
      • double act credits
    • Preversions
    • The Mortal Pleasure of Wander Lust
    • Red Cross & Takeaway
    • Lulu
    • Cowboy Mouth
    • The Meeting >
      • the meeting credits
    • Action / Tongues
    • The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
    • A Letter from L
    • Dinosaurs and All the Rubbish / The Hunting of the Snark
    • Free Theatre Christmas Show
    • The Ride Across Lake Constance
    • Electra
    • In Three Minds
    • The Rapist Over Suzannah
    • 1984: The Future Is Now
    • Make-up Ground down / Texts for Decomposition
    • Leonce and Lena
    • Court Case: Free Theatre vs The Arts Centre
    • The Almost Free Theatre Kabernette
    • The Joffongract
    • King Lear
    • Kabarett
    • King Ubu
    • Black Cat Cabaret
    • The Gas Heart/Ox on the Roof/The Mirror Wardrobe One Fine Evening
    • Jazz Cellar Dada / Heavy Metal Cabaret
    • Round Dance
    • Woyzeck
  • Te Puna Toi
    • Past Te Puna Toi Projects
    • Artists in Residence
  • SUPPORT
  • CONTACT
  • CNZ application

Remake

We had several brilliant ideas, to write an opera each, to produce our own films...
Pauline Parker, 1954, June 18 (Friday)
I asked two actors to follow the footsteps of Parker and Hulme in their own way, but instead of committing a murder, they were to make the film that Parker and Hulme did not make
Peter Falkenberg
8 November 2009, Premiere at Christchurch Arts Gallery
production credits
Remake is a film about remaking the stories of Parker and Hulme and of Genet's The Maids, where the filmmakers act out and mix in their own life stories and in which the ensuing confusion leads to both comic and tragic results. It can be read as a murder mystery, a satire on Christchurch contemporary life or a DIY (do-it-yourself) attempt to make a New Zealand new wave art film.​
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Synopsis

Liz and Marian are two young students of film and theatre in Christchurch, New Zealand, who decide to make a film. They film each other when they talk to their boyfriends on the phone or re-enact "scenes" that they had with them. They place a hidden camera in their parents' living rooms to film "scenes" they have with them. They are also researching the fantasy lives of Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker who murdered Pauline's mother in Christchurch fifty years ago. They try to take on their roles and to (re)make a film about them (Heavenly Creatures). They follow their footsteps around Christchurch and, like Juliet and Pauline, search for a Fourth World, which is more exciting and meaningful than their lives at the bottom of the world, where nothing ever happens.
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Together they try to find this hidden world: in the church, in Christchurch's witches scene, in the tapu places of Port Levy, in drugs and dreams, in each other, and above all, in film and theatre. Like Juliet and Pauline they role-play as film stars (Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth) and remake scenes from the Marx Brothers and Verdi's Tosca. But they also replay scenes from works that themselves investigate role-playing, such as Jacques Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating and Jean Genet's The Maids, or scenes from life, like a prominent New Zealand theatre director's public abduction and shaming. The theatrical games that they play with the scenes of the murderous maids increasingly mirror Parker and Hulme's as well as their own games in mixing the fake and the real.
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To film all this they acquire the help of the cameraman Shahin and the musician Nick with whom they also play their own games. The question becomes whom they will "murder": themselves, each other, their mother or father, or their boyfriends. The murders that end the film come as surprises that are at the same time inescapable.
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Director's Statement

​When Parker-Hulme tried to “moider” the mother, they were not achieving the Real that they were after; they were repeating scenes from films that they had seen.  One cannot escape representation, except as a fake, a remake, a repetition, or a traumatic failure.  One cannot make things happen, here or anywhere.  

Nothing Ever Happens Here
Peter Falkenberg
Completely unoriginal at every turn. It's all been done before, and better.

The Editors
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Articles and Publications

New Take on bizarre teen murder case
Amanda Legge, Christchurch Star, Wednesday 23 June, 2004

Parker-Hulme movie delayed
Juliette Sivertsen, publication unspecified The Star?, Friday January 21, 2005

'Theatre of Unease'
​
Peter Falkenberg, Performing Aotearoa, 2007

Research

Greta Bond used Remake as material for her PhD research Evangelistic Performance in New Zealand: The Word and What is Not Said, University of Canterbury, 2008

Marian McCurdy used Remake as material for her MA research Women Murder Women: Case Studies in Theatre & Film Canterbury University,  2007 
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  • ABOUT
    • Manifestos and Writings
    • A brief history...
    • Who We Are
    • The University Connection
    • Shirley Horrocks documentary
    • Training and Devising
    • Home, Space and Design
  • HOME
  • WHATS ON
    • The Passionate Puritan
  • EDUCATION
    • Kids Holiday Programmes
    • Schools Workshops
    • Adult workshops
  • PRODUCTIONS 1979 - present
    • The Cat Eleonore
    • The Deadbeat Opera
    • Babylon Berlin
    • Beggars Banquet
    • Woyzeck
    • The Axe
    • Endgame
    • Digitising Performance
    • Erewhon: Over the Range
    • A Summer Night's Dream
    • How Dare You
    • A Winter's Tale
    • Ars Acustica
    • Alice
    • The Black Rider
    • Frankenstein
    • The Mauricio Kagel Project
    • Footprints/Tapuwae
    • Kafka's Amerika
    • Ubu Nights >
      • Past Ubu Nights >
        • Ma Ubu Night
        • Ubu Through the Looking Glass
        • Ubu in Wonderland Ubu Night
        • Frankenstein Ubu Night
        • Casablanca Ubu Night
        • Faust Ubu Night
        • Not Hamlet Ubu Night
        • Punk Ubu Night
        • The Art of the Deal Ubu Night
        • Crossroads Ubu Night
        • Ubu Shows Us the Way to Brecht's Whiskey Bar
        • The Devil and the Blues Ubu Night
        • Bowie Ubu Night
        • Warhol Ubu Night
        • Berlin Kabarette
        • Beat Ubu Night
        • Twin Peaks Ubu Night
        • David Lynch Ubu Night
        • Kafka Ubu Night
        • Tango Ubu Night
        • Ubu Ubu Night
        • Lovecraft Ubu Night
    • Canterbury Tales
    • The Soldier's Tale
    • Bluebeard's Castle >
      • Bluebeard's Castle credits
    • I Sing the Body Electric
    • Big Heads Protest
    • Hereafter
    • Passion, Pulse and Power
    • The Earthquake in Chile
    • Don Giovanni Invites you to Dinner
    • Doctor Faustus
    • The Marvellous Corricks >
      • Corricks - Credits
    • Distraction Camp
    • Remake
    • Ella and Susn
    • There and Back Again
    • Faust Chroma
    • Enigma Emmy Goering/Nico Sphinx of Ice
    • Change Proposal
    • Faust Feast
    • Diana Down Under
    • Philoctetes >
      • Production Credits - Piloctetes
    • Fantasia
    • Christmas Shopping
    • Grimm's Sleeping Beauty
    • Achternbusch in the Antipodes
    • Caucasian Chalk Circle
    • Samson Airline
    • Antigone
    • Kabarett Kabul
    • Footprints/Tapuwae
    • The Well Intentioned Wife
    • The Last Days of Mankind
    • Bakkhai / Diotek
    • Krapp's Last Tape
    • Murderer Hope of Women / The Philosopher's Stone
    • Comrade Savage
    • Love on a Bicycle
    • Crusoe: A Lapsarian Mass in Twelve Movements
    • Medea
    • Songs to the Judges
    • Resolution Island
    • Oedipus Rex/Oedipus at Colonus
    • The Empire Builders
    • States of Shock
    • Robinson Crusoe or: I That Was Born To Be My Own Destroyer
    • Power
    • MedeaMaterial
    • Salome
    • Electra
    • The Girl Who Sings Waterfalls
    • Hamletmachine
    • Oresteia
    • A Respectable Wedding
    • Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
    • Cloudkiwiland
    • Double Act / Postponeless >
      • double act credits
    • Preversions
    • The Mortal Pleasure of Wander Lust
    • Red Cross & Takeaway
    • Lulu
    • Cowboy Mouth
    • The Meeting >
      • the meeting credits
    • Action / Tongues
    • The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
    • A Letter from L
    • Dinosaurs and All the Rubbish / The Hunting of the Snark
    • Free Theatre Christmas Show
    • The Ride Across Lake Constance
    • Electra
    • In Three Minds
    • The Rapist Over Suzannah
    • 1984: The Future Is Now
    • Make-up Ground down / Texts for Decomposition
    • Leonce and Lena
    • Court Case: Free Theatre vs The Arts Centre
    • The Almost Free Theatre Kabernette
    • The Joffongract
    • King Lear
    • Kabarett
    • King Ubu
    • Black Cat Cabaret
    • The Gas Heart/Ox on the Roof/The Mirror Wardrobe One Fine Evening
    • Jazz Cellar Dada / Heavy Metal Cabaret
    • Round Dance
    • Woyzeck
  • Te Puna Toi
    • Past Te Puna Toi Projects
    • Artists in Residence
  • SUPPORT
  • CONTACT
  • CNZ application